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With SMC in our heads and the possibility of a part time store with a bridal theme, we just went ‘to look’ at the open space at Selders’ Mall.

We were excited on the way over, set with our plan and pitch. One area of concern was required non-competition with the other stores. A bridal dress salon, a masseuse, a hair salon, a tax man, tuxedos, a seamstress and rental décor already occupied the mall. Jeff and I had poured through every page of products and were thinking wedding décor, wedding party gifts, table favors would fit in nicely.

We’d been told the space was small, but seeing it in person was a bit surprising. I skeptically surveyed the situation. What it really was, was a 10-foot by 10-foot alcove previously used as bridal gown dressing room, if that helps you imagine it any. There wasn’t a dedicated door, just a rod where a curtain had previously hung, and to be honest it was a bit dingy and very poorly lit.

I swiftly conjured up a list of things we’d need to change. Jeff declared it was a perfect size.

I saw the need for paint, carpet cleaning and a way to cover the one narrow door-side sized window without obliterating all of the small amount of natural light.

Jeff envisioned lining the walls with shelves, moving in a small desk and chair and setting up the cash register and credit card machines SMC had helped us obtain. Brides, mothers of brides, wedding planners are not solo shoppers. I worried that trying to get more than two people besides Jeff or I into the store would make it seem uninvitingly small.

In addition, we’d have to be ultra selective with our merchandise. To me, that made the tiny spot a big gamble. Reduced variety can only attract a reduced audience, and we hadn’t even established exactly who we thought our narrow-niche customers might be, yet.

I was impressed with the balloon and rental decor business our enthusiastic friends had set up. The other business owners/space renters seemed nice. Price wise, it fit our budget. The location was pretty good and would give our store-to-be a Tecumseh address. We spent a good amount of time speaking with the owner, asking if we could perhaps incorporate the entrance hallway into the room as part of the shop.

She was agreeable to that, but did not want us to use a side entrance to the building as our main in. I thought that was reasonable and a good business decision. It would give anyone looking for us an idea of what else was there, and us a chance to catch the attention of customers who didn’t arrive already planning to visit our gift shop.

While Jeff and the others were still talking, I slipped back to re-evaluate the room. Something about it reminded me of something I’d seen before. Another business in a microscopic space that managed to be jam-packed full of specifically themed merchandise.

I was still contemplating that as Jeff and I, our friends and the owner made our way into the parking lot.

What happened next was what Jeff would later refer to as a “menu moment.”

Our salsa garden lead to lots of salsa and experimentation. Skow’s organic farm in Adrian was a frequent stop. We’d pick up extra tomatoes, onions, garlic, cilantro and whatever else looked good. Jeff’s frequent visits lead to a friendship, because, well … Jeff!

At least once a week I’d head over there with Jeff. We’d pick fresh produce and Jeff would make “Summer Slop.” For sure not the most appetizing name, but it was wonderful. It began with bacon or kielbasa and continued with the addition of zucchini, onions, tomatoes, garlic, green beans, peppers hot and not, eggplant, spinach, corn – whatever was available was included in the pot. Fresh grated parmesan topped our plated mounds of delish.

Frequency and the friendliness became the basis of many long nights of culinary weirdness. Near the end of the day, Jeff would swing by the farm and he and Mr. Skow would come to an agreement about the leftovers.

Once it was a plethora of green beans which took us about 6 hours to clean and snap. The fruit of our work resulted in the most amazing canned goods which lined that self-assembled cabinet in the laundry room. There were 10 quarts of beautiful Italian bean, and 6 quarts of experimental green beans spiced with Hungarian peppers and dill. Jeff made up that recipe on the spot. They were fantastic and fantastically addictive. I playfully created labels for both types of green beans and cheekily dubbed his creation “Pick-a-Dilly Beans.”

My New Yorkers, East Coasters, Tennesseans and perhaps even a few Michiganders are probably giggling about the incongruous picture of city-me this creates, but that was nothin’ really.

We canned stewed tomatoes, crushed Italian spiced tomatoes, tomato juice, carrots and salsa. But, by far the most memorable to us and our Adrian neighbors is the time Jeff and I shucked over 80 ears of corn in our driveway, mostly in the dark. I arrived home after work early evening and discovered I was unable to pull in. Rows of bins, and Jeff in a lawn chair blocked my way. He explained he thought he’d be done by the time I got there, but had apparently misjudged the amount of end-of-the-day corn he’d bargained for.

I changed my out of my work clothes and joined him and before we knew it, it was dark. Streetlights popped on and I ran into to turn on the inside office lights on that side of the house hoping it would cast a bit more light. With my hand on the un-flipped light switch, I naturally glanced outside. It was a messy scene, and I figured when we were done, we were going to have a heck of a lot of clean up.

Even with his back to me, arms pulling and ripping, tossing first-stage cleaned ears into bins, I could tell Jeff was truly happy. It was quite a picture, and one I’d wish I thought to take. But, the memory and my grinning chuckle remain.

PS – we were out there ‘til midnight, rinsing with the garden hose and hauling full storage bins of corn inside. The next morning, I wandered into the kitchen to find Miss Fred crouched on top of a pile, feasting on an ear of corn. She was a weird little cat, but then again, who were we to judge? 😉

Jeff and I shared the desire to own our own business. Since we both had jobs, we often talked about what we’d like to do, together, someday. And since Jeff was up late at night a lot, he was the one who saw the Tom Bosely, Specialty Merchandise Corporation infomercial. He told me about it in the morning on our way to work. That evening we crammed into our tiny office in the Tecumseh townhouse, fired up the computer and read everything there was to read on the SMC website.

We started off with a standard website and sent out a dozen business inquiries. We thought we should start small. We received one response from a tattoo shop in Tecumseh, set up a meeting and sold a few things. We sent out another dozen, but nothing came of those.

Jeff came up with another idea, though. Jeff used to sell trading cards at expos and we both loved flea markets, so we decided to try those route. The hardest thing about retail is trying to gauge what buyers want. We set out to see what was missing from the local weekend markets, and decided it was garden décor and birdhouses. I also included some of my fabric flower pins, just to see what would happen.

We did well enough our first show to earn back our table fee and recoup half of our purchase money. It didn’t come close to breaking even for us, especially with the program buy-in fee. I took the catalogues into work and made a few sales that way. What was left was taken to another flea. That’s where we learned (which we should have already known) that the same buyers go many places to see what is different. Of course, we should have known that, because that’s why we went to many places, as well.

After spring and summer, comes winter and no markets. We had quite a bit of stock left, and our enthusiasm for dragging around merchandise, setting up and tearing down displays every weekend kinda fizzled. It came up in conversation one day with friends who had a retail space in a mall that currently had some open spaces available.

“What good would a store be?” I asked Jeff. “You can’t just have a store open on weekends…”

Sadie continue to tall-up. She was adorable and sweet and fun, just different. Maybe not so smart, but sometimes smarter than us. We solved the litter-box raids by putting up a baby gate at the door to the laundry room. For the first few days, she’d do a double-take whenever she passed it.

A few days later Sadie seemed to realize what she was missing. She’d stop and sit, stare longingly into the laundry room for a few seconds, huff and then hoof it. She was also obsessed with the red ball.

She really loved that cheap dollar-store firm foam orb. As far as toys go, Sadie never touched the kong. Squeaky toys were instantly dismantled; pieces strewn about were discarded. Somehow, she always managed to hide the squeaker part somewhere obscure. We’d look for them, but never once found one. There’d suddenly be a squeeze frenzy days later. Many times, while one of us was on the phone and often after we’d been asleep for a bit.

Jeff discovered he could keep her entertained longer by sending her on longer indoor fetches. He had perfected a double bounce that would propel the ball into the dining room. He achieved that by launching the ball toward the right wall of the hallway, where it angle-bounced to the left wall. From there it flew it into the dining room and if Jeff and Sadie were lucky, the ball would deflect off a chair and travel toward the living room.

That worked well until the day Sadie bounded after her red ball as it bounced off the hall wall into the laundry room. I watched in fascinated dread as it seemed she would easily clear our brilliant barrier. Sadie flew after it, naturally jumping right over our stop-gap.

“Sadie! No!” I cried out. But my sudden loud outburst hadn’t slowed her down at all. When she didn’t reappear, I slammed the recliner footrest down, stumbling away from a startled Jeff. He hadn’t quite processed what was going on, partly because he couldn’t see around the corner and mostly because I hadn’t filled him in.

“Oh, no! No, no, no no no!” I wailed in dismay. By the time I arrived at the entry door, Sadie was snout deep in Miss Fred’s refuse.

Jeff was halfway out of his chair with alarm, yelling back, “What? What?”

Sadie smiled happily at me, picked up her ball, took a running start and just as easily re-cleared the gate on her way back to Jeff.

“You bounced the ball into the laundry!” I huffed. “She jumped the gate and got into the litter again.”

“Oh, that’s no big deal,” Jeff poo-poo’ed me. “That’s what dogs do.”

“Just now!” I emphasized. “Right before she picked up that … that ball with her POTTY mouth and gave it to you.”

Jeff looked down at his hand. “Arrrgghhhh!” His situational assessment was shortly followed by “EEWWWWWWW!” and a forceful arm catapult as the ball went whizzing by my head.

The medications weren’t really helping, so his doctors decided to try alternative measures. TENS units, TED hose and PT were added to Jeff’s mix. None were working as well as hoped. When a sleep study proved he had alarming apnea, an oxygen concentrator and a PAP machine arrived in our home.

After our dog excursion, Jeff mentioned the puppies a few times. I shook my head each time. I thought we had enough troubles.

More than two weeks had passed and I couldn’t get the pups off my mind. Jeff was bored and lonely and, according to his doctors, beginning to show signs of depression.

As far as I could tell, Jeff was still Jeff. Still, I began thinking maybe a dog wasn’t such a bad idea. It’d keep him busy, provide companionship. I was a little worried about what a puppy would put Miss Fred through, but then again, it was a big house. Freddie wasn’t fazed by much. She wasn’t a constant attention grabber or a snuggler. With the exception of drive-by leg-bumping, she wouldn’t get that close. She’d sit near you – maybe close enough for a pet, maybe not, and definitely not often.

On my way out the door to work each morning, I left Jeff his daily list of to-do tasks jointly devised as a way to keep him occupied and helpful. We’d talk about it the night before and hand note what was needed on a pre-printed form I created. On Thursday night we wrote: make a grocery list, make dinner, wash bedding. Friday morning, finally in decision mode, I added an extra line item: call to see if any puppies are left.

Within hours, he found out there were only two puppies left. On our weekend way back to the farm, Jeff of the Big Heart said, “You know… I’ve been thinking… maybe we should take them both, because they’re the last ones, and then one wouldn’t have to be lonely.”

I said, “I’m not even sure about one. I don’t think two is a good idea.”

“Well, how will I decide?” he asked. “You’ll just have to,” was my answer.

There was no commotion in the kennel, this time. Inside the barn, two babies slept peacefully in a hay-lined, low-sided wooden crib. Jeff lifted one in each hand, and set them both down both in the morning sun. While their tiny eyes adjusted into squints, I decided I’d try the ‘Kelsey’ test and plopped myself down on the ground to see what would happen. The next thing I know, I was playfully attacked by a little black and white streak. He ran around me in circles, jumping in and out of my lap and zealously yapping. Continually, and quite normal for a Jack.

The other simply one laid down near Jeff’s feet. The yapper bumped into her a few times, so Jeff picked her up to get her out of the way.

“Is she sick? Could she be contagious?” I asked, comparing her docile demeanor to her energetic brother. “I don’t think so,” Jeff answered. Because I was me, I adamantly encouraged him to ask. Because he was Jeff, he handed her off to me and set out for the house.

Kelsey came into my life purposefully from the Nashville Humane Society. She was a three-legged motherless German Shepherd/Sheltie mix I met after the NHS experienced a fire. I’d gone to foster a cat, but was ambushed by a wicked fast furball that jumped into my lap, snuggled up under my ear and held on as if her life depended on it. She was so seriously quick, I didn’t notice her missing leg until I put her down a good 15 minutes later.

OK, back to the TN litter experience….

Cab was a black lab mix puppy from a purebred chocolate lab and … some other type of dog. This puppy boy was talkative in the way Cab Calloway sang: Ayow, ayowa, yowa, yow. He ambushed me with cuteness and sang the entire time I was driving. Yes, beginning in Tennessee, all the way to Michigan.

Anticipating the same sort of scenario in Michigan, I was determined not to reach in anywhere or pick anyone up. Jeff seemed to know the farmer that let us into the dog run area. The man didn’t stick around, closing the gate behind him as he left. “I’m gonna finish my dinner,” he said. “Let me know when you’re done.”

We rounded a corner were completely ambushed by steady stream of roly-poly Jack Russell tumblers. I stopped moving at once and must have looked as surprised and terrified as I felt, because Jeff stopped, too. “What?” he asked.

“I don’t want to squish one!” I faltered. He laughed and advised me to move slowly.

“There are more in the barn,” he explained, grabbing my hand.

My eyebrows shot up and my eyes narrowed. “And you would know this how?” I inquired. “Because… I’ve already been here,” he answered matter-of-factly. I realized I’d been ambushed by my dogged husband, too.

Moving inside, it took me a moment to adjust to the dark. I was still squinting a little when one of the little spotters ran up to Jeff’s foot, sniffed and start a happy dance. “

Oh,” he said scooping it up to eye level, “you remember me!?” He scratched both ears, rubbed it’s pudgy belly and turned to me with hopeful puppy-eyes. “It’s a boy….” Jeff offered, extending the little guy toward me.

I took him without fear, because, as I mentioned earlier, the pip squeaks weren’t ready to leave their momma, yet.

As near as I can tell, I began my first on-line blog in February 2008. The only semi-proofs I have are a binder-clipped, wrinkled paper table of contents printed on December 27, 2013, and an entry dated November 10, 2009 that indicates I’d been at it for 89 weeks.

The announcement that the University of Michigan library would be offering a free movable type publishing platform arrived in a daily news email. Known as ‘mblog’ the site hosted my weekly entries until December 2013.

I eased into blogging by rolling away from a previous weekly publishing. What started as a weekly email to 37 people turned into a way to update family, friends and coworkers on a 2007 mission trip. I called the original email newsletter, “Midweek Encouragement” and it offered just that. The standard header on each weekly Word document read, “One Page, Once A Week for the Promotion of Learning and Love.”

When mblog ended, I had to find a new way to keep sharing. I researched a bit and ended up on WordPress. The reviews indicated it was an easy-to-use site, the yearly fee was reasonable and instead of having to email a link directly to my readers, the link could be auto-sent to any subscriber.

The subscriber thing didn’t exactly take. The direct email list is now 64 participants, and the WordPress subscriber list has stalled at 58. Exposure on Facebook and Twitter is auto-linked and between the two, there are at least 250 potential exposures.

February must be an historically slow month for me because that’s the month I chose to enter the Instagram world in 2016. I’m hovering around 175 followers there. To be honest my average weekly WP stats show about 25 average views per week.

The most read week I ever had was October 4, 2016 with 131 views, not so coincidentally the near 10th year anniversary of my husband Jeff’s passing. This isn’t a pity party. It’s just me contemplating my strange dedication to maybe being heard, at least once a week.

Here’s what I do know, though. 484 weeks in, the answer to the hard and frequent question addressed in that November 2009 passage hasn’t changed much.